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Published: January 4th 2009
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the hut
our office at Sumba Our office at Sumba is the coolest since it has a hut on the backyard, where you can lay around and reach mangoes from the tree beside it. I spent the next morning chatting with the Sumba staff here while we pick peel and eat the mangoes. The team leader and awareness officer from Flores office also came to Sumba to attend the wedding as well. They told me so many stories about Flores makes me want to go to Labuan Bajo soooo bad! Crossing my fingers to next year.
The people at the office called me to run out sometimes so I can see people bring buffalos to traditional ceremony. In the afternoon Oom Doms was ready with his motorbike so we could ride after and took a video of it.
People of Sumba eat three times than normal people in Indonesia. I don’t know how could they manage to eat rice that much with only a small piece of meat, fish or chicken.
Today I get to see the advertisement of Wallace I made for National Geographic Indonesia. They’ve changed the border colors without me knowing it. Kind of disappointing, but it’s not my place to complain.
Anyway our
input for the Wallacea Edition is mostly satisfying. Especially the part about Mbeliling.
I feel so empty of experience when I talk with the people im working with. They are very friendly, adventurous, focused, and incredibly smart. These people they have the richest experience and they know what they’re fighting for. A guy was face to face with Sumatran Tiger when he was working with WWF, another guy had to join a whale hunter tribe boat from around the east, he was so close to death when he faced 4 meters high wave in front of that 2 meter long boat.
This girl she’s just 21 years old and she’s like… She’s the junior ornithologist and when she works in the jungle she’ll have to stay there for 3-4months. Just to see what birds are around! She tells me she has to deal with wild snakes and bats, she was laughing when she talked about 10 bats were going to bite here and she’s like 150 cm or what.
These are the smart people who are going for those things because they have goals for conservation and the nature, and when I talk with them they just smile and laugh
all the time, they don’t act like a smart ass or show off about what they have (like what im doing now). Yet there are so many things to learn from their stories. I think it’s true about what they say that true experience makes people wiser. It’s really great to know people like them, they gives me many lessons to learn, and I hope I will do because I still need to.
The next morning we attend the wedding ceremony in the church. In Sumba they greet with touching each other nose’s tip. It was a bit awkward at first but I think it makes people comfortably close after because it’s impossible to be not comfortable with people you’ve touch the nose’s tip with yours.
After eating meatballs and stuck at the meatball stall for 2 hours because of rain, we all went together with car to the reception. So big area, so many people, so many food (poor pigs and the buffalos they are pork and meat now), so loud music it’s such a festive. The best part was when we got into a dark room where the food is, it was supposed to be lunch but due
to late start we ate when it was dark already. we couldn’t even guess what food we put on the plate. But they all were tasty meat. Either pork or beef. Maybe buffalos. I shouldn’t eat buffalos because my great grandfather didn’t allow us to eat them. He said water buffalos spent all life to be labored in the field and when they gets old and cant work anymore they will be killed so people can eat its meat. He promised to never eat it and he told all the family to not. One of my dad’s relative ate buffalo meat once and got a skin disease. Doesn’t matter how superstitious it is I don’t think I have interest in eating buffalo meat anyway.
Introduced with new friends from other NGO we talked about conservation matter. The traditional atmosphere was very thick. It was great to be welcome in.
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